Tesla CEO Elon Musk received unexpected support for his plans to shrink the federal government – from Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders.
The Vermont senator, who twice came in second place for the Democratic nomination for president, praised Musk’s plans to reign in defense spending, saying: ‘Elon Musk is right.’
Sanders posted on social media: ‘Last year, only 13 senators voted against the Military Industrial Complex and a defense budget full of waste and fraud. That must change.’
But Sanders is not the first Democrat who has expressed support for Musk’s plans to shrink defense spending as the co-head of Trump’s proposed Department of Government Efficiency, along with businessman Vivek Ramaswamy.
Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat representing California in the House of Representatives, previously told CNN there are other liberals who would work with DOGE to cut ‘waste, fraud and abuse’ from the Defense budget.
‘Let me provide an area where there could be bipartisan collaboration – I mean the Defense budget, which is nearly a trillion dollars,’ Khanna, a member of the House armed Services Committee, said on Monday.
‘There has been tremendous reporting about the waste, fraud and abuse of that budget… So if they go to say there needs to be more open competition, not the monopolization in Defense contractors, and propose recommendations, that’s something that I think could be supported,’ he said of Musk and Ramaswamy’s new department.
‘If they find areas of truly wasteful spending across the government, they would get support.’
Elon Musk received support for his plans to cut government spending from Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders on Sunday
The Vermont Senator praised Musk’s plans to reign in defense spending
Musk and Ramaswamy were tasked by President-elect Donald Trump to examine how to massively slash government spending.
They would then report back to Trump within two years, with Trump saying ‘their work would conclude no later than July 4, 2026 – A smaller government, with more efficiency and less bureaucracy, will be the perfect gift to America on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.’
Both Musk and Ramaswamy have already suggested they may take a look at slashing the defense budget.
‘We need to strengthen our military by focusing on the *effectiveness* of our defense spending, rather than just reflexively increasing the magnitude,’ Ramaswamy posted on X on November 22.
Musk then responded, ‘DOGE will improve the efficiency of Defense spending.’
The two also wrote in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal about the need to cut waste from the Department of Defense budget, after it failed its seventh consecutive audit.
In fact, the agency has never passed an audit since it became legally obligated to carry them out in 2018, despite being the federal government’s largest area of discretionary spending, according to The Hill.
‘The Pentagon recently failed its seventh consecutive audit, suggesting that the agency’s leadership has little idea how its annual budget of more than $800billion is spent,’ they wrote.
Rep. Ro Khanna, of California, also previously said Democrats would support DOGE’s efforts to cut defense spending
But Michael McCord, undersecretary of the Defense comptroller and chief financial officer, insisted last month that the department ‘has turned a corner in its understanding of the breadth of its challenges.’
He said the department is working toward a clean audit by 2028 by modernizing the workforce, improving financial data systems and increasing interoperability between systems.
‘Our strongest path forward is to keep a lot of continuity in what we’re doing,’ McCord insisted.
Part of the problem, however, is that lucrative contracts are handed out to private corporations – meaning that billions in taxpayer dollars go to companies that do not need to disclose their spending.
In October, the Pentagon revealed that $431.4billion, or a whopping 71 percent of its spending, went to private contracts last year, the Daily Beast reports.
Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy were tasked by President-elect Donald Trump to find ways to slash the federal budget
The major winners of these contracts were Lockheed Martin, which made $61.4billion from the US government; RTX, which made$24.1billion; and General Dynamics, which made $22.9billion.
Lockheed Martin, the largest US defense contractor, wound up making 74.2 percent of its sales to the US government in the third quarter, while US commercial sales made up just one percent of its revenue.
Meanwhile, the Defense Department’s budget for fiscal year 2024 was set at $841billion, or about 12.5 percent of the total federal budget.
It now has $4.1trillion in assets and $4.3 trillion in liabilities, after reporting last year that it could only account for just half of its assets.
